Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > The Economy of the Covenants Between God and Man: Comprehending a Complete Body of Divinity > Status Update

Though the concept Witsius is presenting here was quite literally life-changing for me not too long ago, I now find this language in isolation to be too contractual and transactional (not that I disagree with it in principle, and believe that God Himself sometime talks this way from a certain juridicial perspective). Witsius goes on to talk about a "covenant of works," which I believe puts the emphasis on the wrong (legal) syllable when it comes to God's covenant with Adam, that it was all about works and obedience narrowly considered instead of faithfulness.

God's covenant with Adam was about faith (personal trust and allegiance to God), to be consummated with kingly Life. When Adam failed the probationary test of his faith at the tree, it was a rebellion borne from faithlessly trusting the word of the Serpent and siding with him over against God. Thus, I prefer to call this "The Covenant of Life."

"But if we take in the whole extent of the image of God, we says it is made up of these three parts. 1st. Antecedently, that it consists in the spiritual and immortal nature of the soul, and in the faculties of understanding and will. 2dly, Formally and principally, in these endowments, or qualities of the soul, viz. righteousness, and holiness. 3dly. Consequentially, in the immortality of the whole man, and his dominion over the creatures. The first of these was, as one elegantly expresses it, as precious ground on which the image of God might be drawn and formed: the second, that very image itself, and resemblance of the divinity: the third, the lustre of that image widely spreading its glory; and as rays, not only adorning the soul, but the whole man, even his very body; and rendering him the lord and head of the world, and at the same time immortal, as being the friend and confederate of the eternal God."

I must say that I disagree with Witsius here in locating the image of God in the "endowments or qualities of the soul, viz. righteousness and holiness." I don't believe the image to primarily be something we have (like an Aristotelian "accident") for then how could we still be the image once we have lost these things (righteousness and holiness) in the Fall? Rather, the image is what we intrinsically are.

In the first six days of Genesis, God creates the world in a structured sequence that more than hints at the construction of the tabernacle (which was also created by Spirit superintendence in a seven part sequence). The world itself is a temple, and at the heart of the temple, Eden (the Holy mountain), God places His tselem (image/idol) who is man.

The image is both intrinsic and representational. Intrinsically, man, both individually and corporately, in our whole selves (body and soul) with every thought, word, and deed, are living idols to the Living God. This intrinsic identity gives us our worth, our "rights," and our representational duties, which are patterned after God's work in the days of creation.